Better Advertising – Page 5

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[ January 19, 2021 ] 14 new cases of COVID-19 in Latah County over the holiday weekend News
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Effective Advertising and the Law of Exclusion

March 15, 2017

Is your business defined principally by what-you-sell or what-you-do? Are these the things you talk about in your advertising? May I suggest that you are also defined by what you won’t do or sell, by what you exclude. The principle of exclusion conveys that you’ve drawn a line in the sand, […]

Behind the Mic – “Coaching” William Shatner

March 10, 2017

When advertisers voice their own commercials, we want them to sound natural. Like themselves, not like “radio announcers.” So, we (sometimes, not always) coach them and rehearse with them, until they’re comfortable just talking. In this video, you’ll hear a producer “coach” William Shatner in exactly the opposite direction. It’s […]

On Radio Anything’s Possible

January 11, 2017

It’s well established that sounds enter the brain faster than visuals, and the memory of those sounds fades more slowly. Which is why, as Paul Harvey once pointed out, as a kid in the classroom, you could answer the teacher’s question, “What did I just say?” accurately, even though you’d been […]

Don’t U Make These Mistake’s

September 9, 2016

One of the advantages of working in radio is that the stuff we write is heard, not seen. If there are misspellings or punctuation errors in the script, you won’t notice them. But when our counterparts at Old Smudgy fail to catch similar errors in their articles and ads, they become fair game for self-appointed grammar […]

Does Your Commercial Pass the Five-Second Test?

August 26, 2016

One of the best radio copywriters and producers in the business, Jeffrey Hedquist, recently shared his thoughts on how an ad writer or advertiser can gauge potential response to a commercial – preferably before it’s sent forth onto the airwaves. He writes: Here’s a simple, but possibly painful test to perform […]

Targeting the “Right” Customer and Other Fallacies

August 22, 2016

You don’t have hundreds of millions of dollars to test the effectiveness of your advertising. But Procter and Gamble does. And they’ve spent many millions of dollars carefully testing their advertising to arrive at this conclusion: Procter & Gamble Co., the biggest advertising spender in the world, will move away from […]

Don’t Use That Song in Your Commercial!

August 18, 2016

I was recently asked for a favor: to provide a short voice-over for a video intended for presentation at an upcoming trade show, in exchange for dinner and wine for four at a swanky restaurant, worth around $200-250. We live in a small town and the business owner was under a […]

Political Advertising: Radio Wins the Vote

August 5, 2016

This is the story of how one political candidate harnessed the power of radio advertising to win a competitive election. Following the death of Washington State Representative Steve Hailey, a former state legislator, Don Cox, was appointed to fill his seat. Cox chose not to run for the open seat […]

Speaking of “Word-of-Mouth…”

July 31, 2016

“Word-of-mouth” is not advertising. It’s a personal recommendation. It starts with someone being deeply impressed by a product or service, so much so that when an opportunity arises, he or she tells another person about it. With this in mind, may I offer you a few recommendations of my own? For gentlemen who shave regularly, […]

What You Don’t Know About Millennials

July 31, 2016

I was working on a post on this very theme when the weekly Small Market Radio Newsletter appeared in my inbox and I read my friend Jay Mitchell’s summary of the most recent research into the media consumption habits of Millennials. Seeing no reason to reinvent the wheel, I decided just to […]